BELLEVUE, WA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/28/12 -- UC4 has announced that Forrester Consulting has released a new, data-rich commissioned study, "The Changing State of IT Operations," for which they conducted an in-depth survey of 160 IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs) to understand the expectations and the key challenges that IT faces in the upcoming year. The study offers rich insight into how the challenges can be overcome and points to the need for advanced, integrated systems management and IT process automation solutions.

According to the study, commissioned by UC4 Software, business and technology decision makers agree that IT isn't keeping up with the needs of the business. For example, 65 percent of ITDMs indicated that it takes a full three months to deliver new services with 24 percent reflecting six months or more. In a hyper-competitive business environment, for many firms, this equates to lost competitive advantage and lost revenue.

The two camps also agree on the top challenges facing IT. However, there's a significant disconnect on how each measures IT success, which is indicative as to the reason for the divide. While 49 percent of BDMs consider response time/performance as the primary measurement, only 27 percent of ITDMs agree, favoring uptime and cost control as the top two measurement criteria.

While the research indicates that the overwhelming majority of respondents would fund a solution that could deliver just a 25 percent improvement in their most important business process, speed is a big issue.

"I believe that the study clearly states that today's IT operations are simply too complex, and this is caused by a build-up of too many outdated, un-integrated tools that create a conundrum," said Randy Clark, chief marketing officer for UC4 Software. "Companies spend millions to integrate outdated tools or continue to operate in a slow and tremendously inefficient manner with a lack of good process visibility and the constant need to fight fires with valuable IT staff."

The study states that to overcome IT complexity and improve agility, "IT process automation is the way forward." If IT processes are slow and inflexible, are poorly integrated, or require too much hand holding, options are limited: retire them, outsource them or automate them. If they support key, revenue-generating business processes, retiring them isn't an option. If outsourced, there is no guarantee a service provider can do any better. According to the study, "The best option is to automate them."

About UC4 Software

UC4 Software is the world's largest independent IT Process Automation software company. UC4's ONE Automation platform delivers IT Process Automation for organizations facing increasingly dynamic applications and infrastructure, and those migrating to next generation service models for cloud, DevOps and big data. ONE Automation unifies workload, application release, application process, run-book, data transfer, and VM automation, with predictive analytics based on complex event processing technology. Unified process automation is proven to help IT Operations gain greater control and significantly improve both service delivery and cost savings. With 25 years of experience, UC4 automates tens of millions of operations a day for over 2,000 customers worldwide. Rethink IT automation at www.UC4.com.

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